Creating a Workplace You and Your Customers Love: An Interview with Roxanne Emmerich

Roxanne Emmerich is stirring things up in the customer service world. Her new book Thank God It’s Monday! Creating a Workplace Your Employees and Your Customers Love makes the business case for making your company employee-focused, and in doing so customer-focused. Emmerich addresses a broad range of workplace issues that cause stress and dissention, which often results in customers heading for the hills. In this podcast with Customer Management IQ’s Blake Landau, Emmerich describes the secrets of a Thank God It’s Monday! workplace. By highlighting customer-obsessed companies such as Southwest Airlines that go the extra mile for the employee and the customer, she discloses what ignites company change that “rocks your world” and how to give employees permission to be extraordinary (leadership is not a position, it’s a way of being). She suggests how you can create an atmosphere where every day is a celebration, and how to bust “baditudes” (what she describes as dealing with whiners, gossips, bullies, excuse-makers, divas and saboteurs). In making the business case for contagious culture, Emmerich focuses on the principles of good business including values, accountability, trust–and the crucial need for work-life balance and self-assessment. She teaches employees and their managers how to not to lose that “new job feeling” of enthusiasm, commitment and endless possibility. And don’t feel down about the downturn. Emmerich argues that a downturn economy is precisely the time to re-vamp your culture—to focus on the employee, and in doing so, focus on the customer. Today’s customer-focused organizations are narrowing in on their culture, and are reaping the profits.